1271 Test wickets in 14 years of Test cricket make Warne and McGrath the most successful bowling pairing in Test history. What makes them astonishing is that Warne was a leg-spinner while McGrath was a medium pacer. Warne practiced a notoriously difficult art, while McGrath had no discernible weapon – like Ambrose’s pace and lift or Trueman’s outswinger or Waqar’s reverse swing. Even though their bowling styles were poles apart, they were more similar than it seems at first. Both based they’re bowling on absolute, unwavering mastery of line and length. When one thinks of the two of them in a Test match – the one operative word which comes to mind is – Control. They were good enough to control the game most of the time. Warne could do so on first day wickets which offered him nothing, and McGrath could do so on bright sunny days, on flat, plumb wickets made for batsmen.
Between the two, i would say that McGrath was the superior bowler – he took his wickets cheaper, performed more consistently than Warne against all opposition. All great players have their bogey teams – Warne had India and to a lesser extent, the West Indies, Lara has had India, Tendulkar has had South Africa, Lillee had the West Indies, Viv Richards had Pakistan. McGrath has had none. There are very few batsmen who can claim to have absolutely mastered him, in the way that Lara and Tendulkar have mastered Warne.
In Warne’s case, the story of leg-spin bowling is integral to his story. He revived the art – his value lies in great part to his mastery of this specific art (as against say classical off-breaks, or medium pace bowling). It lies in his competitiveness, and his understanding of the cricketing contest. Warne will always been the more celebrated bowler. It will always be a case of Warne’s poetry to McGrath’s prose. It was easy for the average viewer to be drawn into Warne’s contest, embellished by high quality television coverage and detailed (for want of a better word) commentary. There was never a sense of stalemate. In McGrath’s case, there seemed to be no apparent contest. It was a stalemate until he won. Warne was the master of subterfuge – before every series, he invented a new word which could pass for a new, secret delivery which he had developed, just for that series. He did have the ability to turn the leg break exactly as much as he wanted to, and bowl it exactly as fast as he wanted to. McGrath never had a genuine outswinger, and Warne never had a genuine googly which worked against top-order batsmen. He rarely used it against top order players, reserving it for lesser tail-end prey.
It is a measure of the value of leg-spin bowling in Cricket, that Shane Warne, who began his career in 1991-92, was elected one of Wisden’s 5 Cricketers of the 20th Century. This was no partisan nomination, it was an election by a large number of Cricket’s most prominent citizens and journalists. Warne was elected ahead of Frank Worrell, Sunil Gavaskar and Imran Khan, each of whom in my estimation rank above Warne amongst 20th Century cricketers, for the simple reason that they were responsible in large part of the development of their national sides into powerful international cricket teams. Imran and Worrell especially.
The legend of Shane Warne is the legend of Leg-Spin Bowling, as much as it is of the man himself. In McGrath’s case, it is a case of unrelenting, unadulterated excellence. McGrath is one of those rare bowlers who can claim to have never had a slump, to have never failed in the face of any challenge. He was the quintessential machine. Warne on the other hand, was great theatre…
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